


of the fire and the flames

by EssayOfThoughts



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Character Study, Established Relationship, F/M, Jughead is overly dramatic, Love, Mild Smut, Thoughts on a Person, Tree Climbing, adoration, because look, i couldn't NOT at that point
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-03
Updated: 2017-10-03
Packaged: 2019-01-08 18:28:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12259737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EssayOfThoughts/pseuds/EssayOfThoughts
Summary: Or: Five times Jughead climbed through Betty's bedroom window and one time he didn't.





	of the fire and the flames

**Author's Note:**

  * For [stillscape](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stillscape/gifts).



> Written while listening to [_Believer_ by Imagine Dragons](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhP3J0j9JmY), because that is my Riverdale song, I swear. Title is from the [lyrics](https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/imaginedragons/believer.html).
> 
> I did consider doing it as different universes for each different time, and the last one being a time Jughead gets pushed _out_ of the window, for angst reasons... but I decided to be nice, and also once the muse caught me she did not let go. I hope you enjoy this!

**i.**   
He climbs a ladder, not the house. He  _ falls _ through Betty’s window more than anything else, gangly and graceless, but enough for Betty.

He doubts that, often. If he’s enough for Betty, if he could ever be enough, as friend or ally or… anything else. She’s pretty and perfect, polite and persistent, a frightening intensity hidden just beneath her skin that  _ shines, _ shines and he can’t get enough of it. She’s so calm, so certain, so definite, so absolute in all that she does. Even doubting, even uncertain, she finds some point of anchor, some immutable fact and stands there, a rock unassailable against the storm.

Her room is like her, filled with light, bright and war and perfect as she is, a firm certainty beneath all her patient politeness and she’s  _ not _ perfect, Jughead knows this, knows this more than anyone. No one is perfect, no one at all, and in the end everyone will let him down or, worse, he’ll let  _ them _ down, prove them imperfect for placing even the smallest of trusts in him.

Betty never doubts her course when she’s on it, not until she’s shown reason not to. Betty never bends, never breaks, just takes new information and forges a  _ new _ path, burns the steel and stone of the world to molten with her fire, cuts tracks of blood into her palms when she can’t, changing something even slightly. She burns with it, her certainty, a fire bright and clear as a beacon.

Fire purifies. Maybe, even him.

He looks at Betty, bright in the sunlight, some manifested star, and is half breathless, half in awe.

“What?” she asks. “What is it?”

She’s not afraid. She’s not worried. She laughs, nervously, but she stays, true to her course. True to her friendship with him.

_ You don’t deserve this, _ hisses his mind.

_ You haven’t earned this, _ hisses his mind.

Jughead kisses Betty anyway, and she kisses back.

 

* * *

 

**ii.**   
He climbs a tree, the next time, reaches out a hand to knock on Betty’s window. In his pocket is his phone, weighed down by fifteen different texts from Betty asking how he’s doing, if he’s ok, if he’d like to come and visit.

The tree branch really is very uncomfortable.

Betty’s face appears at the window, surprised, shocked,  _ laughing _ and she lets him in.

“I’m sorry,” he says, and her hands smooth over his cheeks, her nails tangle in his hair and he can  _ feel _ her, warm and real and  _ there _ against him.

“It’s ok, Juggie,” she says, soft and earnest and honest. His hands find her hips. He wants to raise one, to cup her cheek, to pull her close, to kiss her with even half the warmth she holds, with all the warmth she inspires in him. But he can’t, too glad to just see her face. Her thumb traces his lower lip, her eyes focussed as bright and sharp as stars on his, as she asks, “Juggie?”

 

* * *

 

**iii.**   
He doesn’t know how to tell her how much she means to him. He never does. There is something in her which gives him hope, not just for him, but for his dad, for his mom, for Jellybean, for the Serpents, for the whole of Riverdale. There’s something so bright to her, so beautifully certain, and she inspires it all those who dare let it. Veronica and Archie burn bright now too, Cheryl, with all her soot-stained skirt is warm for Betty, only for Betty, who offered a promise and a kindness, and a simple, single offer of protection. Josie and the Pussycats burn bright too, but they burn with the Muse, with Terpsichore, with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, Josephine Baker and Nina Simone, a brightness that sings more to Archie and Veronica than it does him.

Betty burns with hope, not music, Betty burns with the hope of  _ Les Miserables _ (the old version, the  _ good _ version, not Hugh Jackman and Russell Crowe man-growling everything), with the hope of Enjolras.

Betty, Jughead knows, could lead a revolution one day, if only people might listen. Betty, Jughead knows, would support any revolutions near, would push them to the light before herself - it was never herself she meant to push to the spotlight with her article, it was him and his dad and the entire South Side, her pride in truth, her pity at ignorance, her pitiless anger at all those who would deny what Riverdale truly was.

Of all people, Betty sees Riverdale clearly, as clearly as he does. But he sees and he despairs, he turns to gothic novels and stories with Hitchcock blondes, turns to horror with hopelessness while Betty refuses. Betty hopes.

Betty burns, bright as a star.

Stars, Jughead knows, can burn for billions upon billions of years.

His arm tightens around her shoulder, pulls her a little closer. She doesn’t object in her sleep, just snurfles, sighs, snuggles close to him, one arm stretched over his stomach, her head on his shoulder.

Outside the window, the sun is coming up.

“Betty,” he whispers. She shifts and does not wake. “Betty. It’s almost morning.”

She frowns, rolls her shoulders, sits up and stretches without opening her eyes.  “Mm?”

He sits up, leans forward, rests his chin on her shoulder as she tilts her head back against his. “Yeah.  _ ‘Lo, the dawn breaks, _ and all that.”

_ “‘Look, love, what envious streaks/Do lace the severing clouds in yonder east’,” _ Betty recites.

_ “‘Yon light is not daylight, I know it, I.’”  _ Jughead laughs softly. “I can recite it too.”

“Terrible romance,” Betty says. Her eyes are still closed. When Jughead shifts to let her lean back against him he can see the skin of her eyelids, softly pearlescent in the dawn light. “I prefer Beatrice.”

Jughead laughs, strokes gentle hands over her skin. “It is morning,” he says. “And any second now your parents are gonna get up and your mom-”

Betty sighs. She’s warm and soft against him, and he wants to lie back, let her weight across his body pin him to the bed, never to rise. He wants to absorb all the light and warmth she can give him, pull her hope into his hopeless spaces, carry her sheer belief with him to the South Side, not to burn out the cynicism he needs, but to throw it’s shadows into sharp relief, make it clear what is real and what is paranoia. In his arms, Betty sighs again, sits up. When she turns to look at him her eyes are clear and focussed as ever, no pause for drowsiness.

“Take care, ok?” she says. “Promise me.”

He interlinks his fingers with hers, pulls her knuckles to his mouth to kiss. “I promise,” he says.

He pulls his clothes on as Betty heads to the bathroom, and is out of the window before she gets back.

 

* * *

 

**iv.**   
It’s raining. It’s  _ really _ raining, thunder and lightning, “dark and stormy night”, the whole deal. The bark of the tree outside is rough to the point of pain, the beam on the side of the house is slick, and Jughead almost wants to find the goddamn ladder again. He manages to get a grip - on the house, not himself. He’s always got a grip on himself, out of sheer necessity these days, the way the town is going.

By the time he gets to Betty’s window he’s soaked to the bone.

“Juggie!” Betty exclaims when he slithers through the window. “V, get a towel.”

Veronica rushes off, Archie helps him peel off his Serpents jacket, sticky and swollen and inflexible with water. 

“Why didn’t you  _ knock,” _ Betty asks.

“At this hour?” he replies. “Your parents would kill me.”

Betty smiles, Betty laughs, brightness shining through. Archie hangs the jacket over a chair to dry off, Veronica returns with a towel. It’s warm and fluffy and smells of Betty’s soaps.

“Being a bit of a daredevil?” asks Veronica. 

Veronica’s warmth is there, slow and smouldering, warm and careful. If Betty is fire then Veronica is magma, and Jughead still doesn’t know what to make of her, not entirely.

“You know,” he replies. “Got to impress your girl.”

Archie laughs, Veronica smiles, Betty shakes her head, warm and shining, almost indulgent.

“You don’t have to impress me,” she says. “Not ever.”

Her lips are soft on his.

 

* * *

 

**v.**   
Jughead climbs through Betty’s window and is met with a kiss. Fierce and warm, burning like the sun, and Jughead basks in it, soaks it in, kisses back as eagerly as she’s kissing him.

There’s no need for questions. Betty knows her course, has chosen her path, tracks her way across the sky like the sun, like the moon.

“Jughead,” she says, finds his phone in his pocket and puts it on the table next to hers. Her screen still shows the last texts she sent him - a photo, a line of flirting and a winkyface.

“Betty,” he says, but he wants to say  _ sun, _ he wants to say  _ eos the dawn _ , he wants to whisper praises into her skin of all the stars he could compare her to. Her hands cup his face, her fingertips are buried in his hair and everywhere he places his hands there’s skin, skin and more skin, left bare from the photos she’d taken, the photos she’d sent to him. 

Her hands drop to his shirt hem and he lifts his arms in a moment, lets her pull the shirt up so he can pull it off, her hands dropping to his belt, to his jeans, her fingers running along the line between waistband and skin, along the sensitive skin of his stomach  until he sucks in gasping breath, half a groan, shivers sending goosebumps over his skin.

“Betty,” he whispers, and something is choking in his throat, some hope, some longing, something weighing him down like lead and uplifting him like all of Betty’s starlight and sunlight. He’s half-shaking with longing, with want, with the touches that Betty’s tracing across his skin.

“Jughead,” she whispers, and it’s half a sigh.

They press closer, her hands leave his waistband to pull him close, his hands divide, one on her cheek, stroking under her eye, tilting her face up to his so he can kiss and kiss and kiss as his other hand trails down, tries to tease her as she’s teasing him, finding sensitive skin until she’s gasping into his mouth, her hands gone back to his belt buckle, to the button of his jeans.

“Betty,” he says, “Are you sure?”

The question has already been answered. Betty knows her path, knows the course she charts through the world and across the sky, knows the route that her decisions map out for her, and she lifts her whole self up on tiptoes, slings one arm around his shoulders so she can look him in the eye.

“Yes,” she says. “If you are.”

Her eyes are focussed, bright as stars, and he kisses her.

 

* * *

 

**i.**   
“You,” Hal Cooper says. 

“Me,” Jughead says.

He’s not going to let Hal Cooper get to him. Alice Cooper can get to him, that’s fine, she’s terrifying when she wants to be, persistent as Betty is with none of her kindness. She’s  _ dangerous _ , according to his dad, used to using a sword more than a pen as her weapon back when she lived on the South Side, her tongue as sharp and bladed as steel. Hal Cooper, in comparison, is soft. Is smug, is  _ scum _ , according to his dad, and from what Betty and Polly have said.

“Jughead,” Alice says, with the most politeness she can muster. “Betty said you’d be coming for dinner.”

“Dinner?” Hal asks.

Clearly, Jughead thinks, he wasn’t consulted.

“Yes,” Jughead says.

“You’re early,” Alice says.

He lifts his bag, folders and laptop poking out from under the flap. “Wanted to compare work with Betty. We’re comparing the curriculums.”

Alice watches him a moment, her eyes as sharp as any snake’s, sharper than some Serpents’, jaw sharp as a knife before she nods. “I’m sure you know the way up,” she says, the edge of a smile curling her lips. “Dinner’s at seven.”

As Jughead makes his way upstairs he can hear edge of a hushed discussion between Betty’s parents. Then he opens the door, and sees sunlight.

 

* * *

 

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave comments!


End file.
